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A Wolf to Potters	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 2652 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Title: A Wolf to Potters
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: None; gen
Warnings: Angst, mentions of past violence, AU
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Harry doesn’t get to have the idealistic image of his father’s youth for long. When he learns the truth, in his first year, about what happened to Professor Snape all those years ago in the Shrieking Shack, it shakes his whole world.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my Wednesday one-shots, written for the following anonymous prompt: I'd like a Harry and Severus genfic where James arrived too late, Remus ended up mangling Severus's arm and Harry finds out, please! Both Harry connecting the dots and hearing the story from Severus himself are fine! I'd like the fic to be set while Harry's still in school, especially in years 1 and 2, and for Severus to be as distrusting and bitter towards Remus! It will have two parts.
The title comes from one translation of the Latin proverb Homo homini lupus, “A man is a wolf to other men.”
A Wolf to Potters
“Professor Snape hates you so much, and it’s not fair,” Hermione said, sitting down in front of Harry at the library table. “I think you ought to go talk to Professor Dumbledore.”
Harry looked at her and wondered what he could say. Then he saw the way she frowned at him, and knew she would probably stand up and go talk to Dumbledore right now if he didn’t say something. This looked like it was bothering her more than the search for Nicholas Flamel. “But he’s just given me detentions. I can’t complain about that.”
“And extra homework.”
Harry looked down at the essay Snape had assigned him to write on the Draught of Living Death. “This is the kind of thing you do for fun, though.”
“Just because I do it doesn’t mean it’s fair for him to assign it to you, out of the entire class!” Hermione leaned forwards and lowered her voice. “Malfoy was talking while Professor Snape was talking, and Professor Snape still didn’t do anything to him!”
Harry sighed tiredly and rubbed his scar. Sometimes it ached more lately, especially at night. “I know, but you know he’s not going to do anything to Slytherins.”
“I don’t understand how you can sit there and act like you don’t mind.”
“And I don’t understand why you act like you’re surprised.” Harry picked up his quill again. “Gryffindors and Slytherins hate each other, Hogwarts is a castle, Professor Snape hates me. It’s just one of those things that always happen.”
Hermione opened her mouth again, still looking unsatisfied, but Ron cut in then, coming back to the table with another load of books that might or might not mention Nicholas Flamel. “Come along next time so you can help me carry these, right?”
Harry had noticed Hermione and Ron would bicker on the slightest excuse, and she started right in. “I was having an important talk with Harry about Professor Snape! If you would…”
Harry sighed and turned back to his essay as Ron and Hermione whispered at each other. They were probably only whispering because they were in the library, Harry knew. Otherwise, they would be yelling.
It did seem strange that Snape should hate Harry so much when Harry hadn’t done anything to him before they met. It seemed even stranger that he should assign Harry essays on potions like the Draught of Living Death, which Harry knew they weren’t going to cover in this class.
That didn’t mean Harry could understand what was going on. Professor Snape wouldn’t answer questions. Harry didn’t think Dumbledore would, either, no matter what Hermione had faith in him for.
Harry had tried asking Professor McGonagall. And she had sighed a little and told him that Professor Snape had his reasons, and Harry was to put up with it and only ask her if it was an emergency.
Harry went back to looking up the ingredients list, and carefully copied down at least three of them before Ron and Hermione pulled him into their argument.
*
Harry moved carefully down the corridor. He knew that it was a little dangerous, but he hadn’t seen or heard Filch and his cat tonight. And he had the Invisibility Cloak, and he really wanted to make one trip to the library and look in the Restricted Section. He didn’t think even Madam Pince would sit in there all night looking for students to kick out over the Christmas holidays.
Maybe she would. The only way Harry would know for certain was to go and find out.
He waited for a staircase to stop revolving, and stepped off the end of it. He was walking towards a corner with a bright torch when a loud sniff stopped him in his tracks. Harry turned around, wondering for a second if Fluffy had got loose.
But Professor Snape was the only one standing there. He was staring straight at Harry even with the Invisibility Cloak on, and his eyes seemed to have a red glow, although maybe that was only the torch reflecting off his eyes like a Muggle camera would. He sniffed again.
Harry stood still. He can’t see me, he can’t see me, I don’t have anything to worry about—
“I can smell you, Potter,” Professor Snape said, and there was a low, rumbling sound to his voice that made Harry freeze, because it reminded him so much of Ripper. “Come out from under that silly Cloak now.”
Harry stood and shivered. Professor Snape couldn’t be sure, he told himself. Or he would have just come over and pulled off the Cloak. That meant Harry could stand still and be quiet and Professor Snape would have to go away.
That didn’t happen. Instead, Professor Snape strode forwards suddenly and yanked the Cloak off. Harry gasped and ducked his head as the neck stung his throat coming off. The next instant, Professor Snape grabbed his arm and turned him around.
Harry shivered, staring at him. The red glow was still in Professor Snape’s eyes, and he sniffed as if he was smelling Harry up like a giant in one of those stories Aunt Petunia used to read to Dudley, the ones who wanted to eat little boys for dinner.
“My office. Now.”
Professor Snape tugged on Harry’s arm, and Harry had no choice but to go miserably along with him.
*
“You have…remarkably little care, when you know that someone has already tried to hurt you at the Quidditch game.”
Harry stared at the floor. He wanted to say that Snape was the one who had tried to hurt him there, and Hermione had been the one to stop him, but he was afraid of getting Hermione in trouble.
And he was afraid of the soft growl that Professor Snape had given when they’d come into the office and Harry had edged away from him. Something else was going on here, and Harry didn’t know what it was.
“No answer? How unlike the famous son of a famous father.”
That stung, though, and Harry finally looked up and snapped back. “I don’t know why you hate me! I’ve never known why you hated me. But you could at least leave my dad out of it. I can’t even remember him.”
Snape sat up behind his desk, and once again the rumbling sound came out of his chest. Harry knew he wasn’t imagining it, this time, or the red-amber glow to Snape’s eyes. Right now, there wasn’t even a torch around Harry could blame it on. But he stood there, because he had had to face Ripper and get bitten, and he might have to do the same thing with Snape.
Abruptly, Snape seemed to calm down. He sat back behind the desk, and there was a strange smile on his face. Harry glanced warily at his teeth. They seemed sharper than normal, but he had to admit he’d paid more attention to Snape’s hair than his teeth.
“Why not?” Snape murmured. “It’s simple enough to contain afterwards, and you’ve already seen part of what I was hiding. If I lied to you about it, you and those troublesome friends of yours would only manage to be more troublesome.”
Harry just waited. He had to. He had no idea what Snape was talking about. But he still shuddered when he heard Snape lock the door behind him.
Snape settled deeper into his chair then, sniffed, and smiled. Then he said, “Has Professor Quirrell taught you anything about werewolves?”
“No, sir,” said Harry, and then felt a sick jolt run through him. His mind jumped straight to a movie he’d glimpsed once on the telly, something about a werewolf eating people and jumping through their windows and biting them—
“You don’t need to worry,” said Snape, in a sarcastic voice that seemed to suggest the opposite. He made a little passing motion with his hand, as if he was actually going to dismiss Harry. Harry doubted that. “It’s not near the full moon. I couldn’t transform even if I wanted to, and while my bite might have…some effects, it wouldn’t make you a werewolf.”
That means he is one! He is one! Harry stood still, hardly daring to breathe. He didn’t look away from Snape, and Snape only watched him with that strange smile still playing on his face.
Harry was sure his teeth were sharper now.
“I’m sure you’d like to hear the story of how I became a werewolf,” Snape whispered.
Harry stood there. In his experience, when adults said things like that, it meant they weren’t going to tell you anything, because you’d like it if they did, and they didn’t want to do anything you might like.
“It went like this,” said Snape, and he wrapped his fingers together and stared at Harry intently. “There was a group of students at the school when I was here, my age. In the same year as me, in fact, all four of them. The Marauders.”
Harry stared blankly at him. Snape sounded upset, but then, he did most of the time. But he was also watching Harry as if he thought Harry should know the word. Harry didn’t. He barely knew what it meant.
Snape looked away after a second, and a little tension leaked out of Harry’s spine. If Ripper was looking away from Harry, it usually meant he wasn’t going to attack him. “One of them was a werewolf. No one knew.” Snape was growling again, Harry thought for a second, but then he realized it was Snape grinding his teeth. “Well, except Headmaster Dumbledore. He built a small hut for this student that was supposed to contain his transformations on the full moon. The Shrieking Shack? I suppose you have seen it.”
Harry had to shake his head, even though Snape looked even more upset when he did that. Well, Harry knew how this went. Adults got upset with Harry for just existing, but they got still more upset if he lied.
“You will, no doubt, on trips to Hogsmeade.” Snape extended his fingers, and for a second, Harry stared them, fascinated, expecting to see claws sprout out of them. “Well. This student was prone to getting out of the Shrieking Shack and running around the—Forbidden Forest. Although I didn’t know that until later.”
Snape sounded horrible now. The growl was building up again, Harry thought. And he still didn’t see why Snape wanted to tell him this.
“One of the group of Marauders was my special enemy. He thought it would be funny to tell me where the entrance to the Shrieking Shack was, and send me there on the night of a full moon—without telling me what I would find there.” Snape shifted, and his eyes came up and pierced through Harry. “His name was Sirius Black.”
Harry blinked. “Sir?” he added, when Snape paused. “I don’t know him.”
Snape frankly stared at him. Then he shook his head a little and said, “It doesn’t matter.” But his voice was unsure.
Harry stood still and waited. He didn’t think he’d get a chance to run, since the door was locked, but he would try if Snape was going to eat him.
“I went down the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack,” said Snape, his voice a hiss. “I confronted the werewolf, without knowing what it was. It—he—bit me.” He turned to Harry. “That was the end of my life as I knew it, and the beginning of one where I must hide what I am, spend nights of the full moon in the Shrieking Shack, try dangerous and experimental potions that would let me control my transformation at the cost of great pain. And do you know the best part of it, Potter?”
“What’s that, sir?” Harry tried to show he was paying attention without looking Snape in the eye.
“There was a student, another Marauder, who heard what his friends were doing and came running to save me. But too late. Too late.” Snape sounded satisfied when he said that, which Harry didn’t understand. Then he looked straight at Harry and added, “That student was your father.”
“What? No!”
Harry shouted the words as he felt certain things fall apart around him. He had always heard that his father was a great Quidditch player and a brave man—well, at least since he’d been here. And it was a relief. He wasn’t the drunk the Dursleys were always saying he was. He wasn’t an evil man.
But Snape’s eyes were glinting at him in the darkness, and he went on talking without even taking points from Gryffindor. “Yes. Yes, he was. He wasn’t the one who set up the prank in the first place, but he arrived too late. And he was the one who couldn’t look me in the eyes afterwards. One of his best friends was a werewolf, but I was too disgusting to look at.”
“I—”
Harry couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t say anything. His head was spinning. He was thinking, My father was a bully. He was thinking, Was he more like Dudley or more like Malfoy?
He couldn’t be like Malfoy. He knew his father didn’t believe some people were better than others. Or he never would have married Mum.
But maybe he was like Dudley. Spoiled and mean.
“Yes.” Snape leaned back behind his desk with a little sigh. “How satisfying to see the look on your face at last, as you realize your father was not perfect. More than worth the slight risk of telling you about it.”
Harry just glared at him some more. He didn’t want to talk to Snape. He wanted to go away and think.
Snape stood up, and Harry automatically turned so that Snape was in front of him. But Snape didn’t act like he was interested in hurting Harry. He went to a cabinet on the far wall, spent a moment searching in it, and then turned around with a potion in his hand.
“This is the Secret-Binder,” Snape said, gesturing at the potion. “It will make sure that you can’t tell anyone else what I told you today.”
“What?” Harry stared at the potion. It was thick and green enough that it would probably make excellent poison. “No! I don’t want to take that! Who knows what you put in it?”
“I wouldn’t want to harm you, Potter,” Snape said. Harry would have described the words as a purr, except now he knew Snape wasn’t anything like a cat. “I want you to live and suffer in the knowledge that your fine father wasn’t so good a man after all.” He paused, and for an instant a shadow seemed to grow across his face. “And I want you to live because you’re the only means we have of getting rid of the Dark Lord once and for all.”
Harry couldn’t even respond to that. His gaze was on the potion, and when Snape moved a step forwards, Harry blurted, “Does Dumbledore know that you’re a werewolf?”
“Of course he does,” said Snape, and rolled his eyes a little. “Do you believe there is anything in this school that Dumbledore is not aware of?”
“Then he should know about who’s trying to get past Fluffy!”
Snape straightened, and his eyes got more intensely frightening, to the point that Harry had a difficult time lifting his feet.
“You will leave that particular problem alone,” Snape commanded harshly. “You will, or I will return the favor that your father gave me all those years ago. Do you understand me, Potter?”
His voice sank, and all Harry could think of was one of those films he had caught a glimpse of on the telly. The werewolf had leaped straight through the main character’s window and attacked him in his bed. His skin crawled when he thought about Snape getting past the Fat Lady and attacking him in his bed.
Or maybe it would be even worse, and he would attack Ron or Neville or something, because he didn’t know which bed Harry slept in. Harry glared back and said nothing. After a second, Snape roughly thrust out the potion again.
Harry drank it reluctantly. It seared his throat and then settled coldly in his stomach, which didn’t seem fair. He handed the vial back to Snape and tried to open his mouth and say, “Professor Snape’s a werewolf.”
There was a strange choking sensation in his mouth, like his tongue had turned backwards, and no sound emerged. Snape grunted and nodded, then pointed his wand to the door. Harry heard the click of unlocking spells and ran out of the office.
He paused when he remembered something. Snape had been so eager to tell Harry he was a werewolf and all the rest of it, he hadn’t remembered to take Harry’s Invisibility Cloak or points from Gryffindor. So he hadn’t said anything about Harry having to return to Gryffindor Tower.
Harry grinned and pulled his Cloak over his head. He probably couldn’t go to the Restricted Section tonight, because he didn’t know where Filch was, but he could do it later!
*
Later, when Harry had looked into the Mirror of Erised and seen his family waving back at him, he had to wonder whether his father had grown up. Did he really look like the man Harry had seen in the mirror, the hazel-eyed man who loved him? Or did he look like the bully Professor Snape had said he was, and he’d been happy or at least not all that upset when Snape got bitten by a werewolf?
But Harry couldn’t answer the question, and other things washed it out of his mind.
For example, he didn’t even realize, until the next year, that he had never asked Professor Snape what the name was of the werewolf who had bitten him.
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A Wolf to Potters